34 comments:

No 1. All authors are white. 2. All authors are men. Ok, that was lazy. So the number one reason is that all authors are white males. The second reason is - I am guessing here - that there is at least one white male among heroes?

A. The scientific basis for the ideas in these stories all hinge on logic, which is a tool of patriarchy.B. If it weren't for those recent pesky fact-terrorists, Mist of Avalon would have at least cracked the top 5.

*giggling* Hate it when the old white guys, using some forms of logic, are actually enjoyed by readers of the genre. Even the softer logic ones. Reading isn't supposed to be fun! It's supposed to be... formative! *giggling*

Read half of these. Been meaning to read some of the others. I am annoyed at myself that I was not thinking sufficiently critically to realize at the time (or for an embarrassingly long time after) that the book (and, really the rest of the series) is essentially theses vs antithesis leads to synthesis, over and over again.

I was also somewhat amused to find not just the sentiment, but the actual statement, barely disguised in Modesitt's Imager.

It's got to be the lack of women authors and protagonists, else Vox would have posted this at VP instead of here. I've only read four of these books, but I can vouch that there are no female central characters in any of those four.

Vox, are these actual complaints that have been posted somewhere, or are you just anticipating the rabbits?

Because their boyfriends/husbands read these books and talk about them with other men and therefore participate in a culture that excludes women/makes them feel left out because said women aren't actually interested in those books at all and just care about feeling excluded :)

I say this as a woman who recognizes most of those authors from our own bookshelves and has actually read three of them - the only one I really liked being hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. This is why I bring my knitting and/or my own book when I'm going to be in the car with my husband and his brothers. They're probably going to talk about sci-fi, engineering, and/or survivalist stuff for a couple of hours straight, and eventually my attention wanders :p

Primary: It is always a male protagonist who is the central messiah figure, 'The One'. Similar to the feminist criticisms of so-called "male-dominated fields", "glass floors", and "glass ceilings".

Secondary: Feminists oppose the version of gender roles and sexual strategies advanced by the current androsphere. They explain gender roles as the outcome of a patriarchal sociocultural legacy. They explain empirical examples of 'dark' female strategies as gender-neutral sociopathy. These books are filled with female characters who play traditional ("patriarchal", "androcentric") gender roles, and manifest female sexual strategies which are too politically incorrect for the modern mainstream, such as hypergamy (branch-swinging), female sexual attraction towards 'dangerous' and 'dark triad' men, etc. (We wouldn't want to plant the seeds of mutiny in the heads of still-plugged-in male readers.)

Examples of 'dark triad' men who get the pussy: Raven from 'Snow Crash', Martin Silenus from 'Hyperion'Example of branch-swinging: In 'Snow Crash', YT branch-swings from Hiro (sigma) to Raven (dark triad supersigma).Example of oppressive androcentric gender roles: In 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress', it is common for male lunar colonists have multiple wives. In 'Dune', the powerful and intricate interplay of masculine and feminine roles is portrayed as parallel and analogous to planetary ecology; contrary to the feminist dogma of sexual egalitarianism.

The easiest angle of attack for the feminists is to praise the 'good' parts and denigrate the 'bad' parts as immature sexual fantasies.

1) How come SF best-seller "50 shades of grey" didn't make it to the top?2) Patriarchy doesn't allow women to become successful SF writers the same way it doesn't allow them to become engineers, mathematicians, etc.